I don’t want to fall asleep.
I can’t.
I know I’ve tried staying awake before, and I know it didn’t work.
But I’m trying again.
Maybe this time I’ll unstick.
Maybe this time I won’t forget.
I pull the note out from its hiding spot and stare at what I’ve written.
- If you haven’t already, find Bodhi Chang. He’s a junior. Close friend.
And then I think about her. What she said.
Why did she wait until tonight to tell me such crucial information? When it’s too late to even do anything about it?
Maybe it’s not too late.
I grab a pen off my desk and quickly scrawl in a sixth entry, then shove the note back into its hiding spot before I can change my mind.
Maybe we’ve already unstuck me.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll be seventeen.
I look down at her text for the fiftieth time.
I’m sorry I didn’t explain sooner. I wanted it to work. And maybe it will
Whatever happens I love you
But I really hope you Remember Me tomorrow
I’m not going to fall asleep.
I can’t.
I won’t.
I—
December.
My eyes are barely open, and already I AM PSYCHED.
The day’s soundtrack kicks on in my brain, an upbeat song I am writing in real time entitled “Everything Changes Today Because Today Is Gonna Be the Best Day That Has Ever Been.” Title probably needs work. But I don’t care.
Because today is going to be the best day that has ever been.
It’s my sixteenth birthday, baby.
Sweet sixteen!
Within hours, I will be acing my driver’s test, finally getting my license—a junior license, sure, but I’ll take it—and hitting those bad streets like a bolt of lightning in Dad’s old Toyota Corolla.
I’m going to name it Rex.
I grab at the nightstand for my phone, ready for the requisite slew of celebratory texts, GIFs, and DMs. Or at the very least a message from my best friend, Manny.
But the phone’s not there. I peek under my bed, on my dresser, under the pair of jeans I left on the floor. It’s nowhere. Probably left it on the couch last night.
I press onward, bounding out of bed and tripping over the very pair of jeans I just looked under. I somewhat gracefully recover, barely saving myself from face planting. “Noice!” I shout as I glide into the bathroom.
Unlike every other day that has ever been, my younger brother, Lincoln, and his gigantic mop of curly hair don’t appear in the hall to engage in a pointless argument about who gets to shower first. I appreciate this birthday gesture. He may be annoying in at least a dozen ways, but he has a good heart.
Hot water pulses on my back as I belt out lyrics to my new hit single. “‘Everything changes today! Because today is gonna be the best . . . day . . . that has ever . . . BEEEEEN!’” People have called me tone-deaf on many an occasion, but I think I make up for it with confidence and gusto. You don’t have to sing well when you’re trying to be funny. Plus, it’s impossible to get the tune wrong when you’re the one writing it.
I move into the bridge (“‘There have been . . . so many days in history . . . but none of those days . . . can compare . . . to the day . . . that is happening . . . NOOOOOOW!’”) giving myself the birthday gift of a long-ass shower, no matter how much it might make Lincoln squirm. Kind of weird that he hasn’t engaged in his usual progression of passive-aggressive knocking to active-aggressive knocking to straight-up screaming through the door for me to finish up. Should probably check on the kid, make sure he didn’t die in his sleep.
But first: five more minutes of deliciously hot water.
Oh, how good it feels to be sixteen!
When I sense my bathroom time has crossed over from annoying to cruel, I flip the shower off, wrap a towel around myself, and deodorize before popping my head into Lincoln’s bedroom to smugly give him the green light.
“Yo, bro, it’s all yours. Thanks for—”
Lincoln’s not in there.
And his bed is perfectly made. The entire room looks weirdly untouched, like he did a thorough clean after he woke up.
Which would be . . . odd.
But also hilarious.
Could this be some kind of prank?
I mean, that’s more my thing, but maybe that’s the whole idea. Turning the tables on the b-day boy, giving him some of his own medicine.
And I have to give Lincoln credit for his commitment. Skipping a shower in the name of a prank is hard-core.
I choose my clothes with a little more thought than usual because this is going to be my birthday suit. Heh heh. I’m obviously not going to my driver’s test—and school after that—naked. Too many people would pass out from excitement. I grab my favorite new purple plaid button-down from the closet. The fabric feels kind of worn-down, which is funny because I just got it. There are also a few shirts in the closet I don’t recognize at all. Maybe
hand-me-downs from my cousin Ben that Mom snuck in there.
Once I’m dressed, I pop back into the miraculously still-empty bathroom to throw a little wax in my hair and spike it up in different directions. Then it’s downstairs to the kitchen, where Mom is at the table with her mug of coffee and Dad is standing by the counter staring into the toaster and Lincoln is . . . nowhere.
“Good day to you!” I say, and it’s almost like my parents flinch.
“Happy birthday, sweetie!” Mom says, her smile somewhat forced.
“Yeah!” Dad says at the same time that the toaster dings. “Happy day, bud.”
“Um, thanks,” I say, confused by their lukewarm vibes and the absence of one family member. “Where’s Lincoln?”
Mom’s smile crumples, and she lets out a sob. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Carter, don’t— I said I wasn’t going to. . . . But every time it’s—”
“I know,” Dad says. He walks over and wraps an arm around her.
“Every time it’s what?” I ask, alarmed by the insanity unfolding before me. “What happened to Lincoln? Did he go out last night? Where is he?”
Mom and Dad look at each other for a moment. Dad gives her a little nod and tells me to take a seat at the table with them.
“Just tell me what’s going on.” I stand firm near the kitchen entrance, my body going haywire, unsure whether to react with fight, flight, or vomit. “Did something happen to Lincoln? Is he dead or something?”
“No,” Dad says with a sigh, rubbing a hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. “Lincoln is fine. He’s totally fine. It’s . . . more you.”
“I’m dead?”
“No, no, you’re— Could you please just sit down, Carter? It’ll be easier to talk about this if we’re sitting.”
“I don’t wanna sit!” I shout. “Where the hell is Lincoln?”
“He’s . . .” Dad squeezes the edge of the round table as he stares at it, like he’s expecting juice to come out.
“How old are you today?” Mom asks, rising to join Dad and me in the Land of the Standing.
“What?”
“How old are you turning today?”
was,” she says. “I’m genuinely asking.”
“Sixteen, right?” Dad says.
“Yes,” I say, not enjoying this at all. “And if you need to ask that, I’d say you’re failing at this whole parenting thing.”
Mom puts a hand over her mouth to stifle another sob.
“Unfortunately,” Dad says, “your answer is, uh, technically incorrect. Even though you believe it’s your sixteenth birthday . . . you’re twenty-two today.”
Have you ever had your parents say something to you that not only feels heinous and inaccurate but also like they might be losing their minds?
“Um,” I say. “If this is a prank, it’s a very bad one. It’s confusing and not funny and seriously WHERE IS LINCOLN? Dude, if you’re hiding behind the couch or something, you can come out!”
“He’s not here, Carter,” Mom says. “He’s at college. His first semester.”
“Ohmigod,” I say, and, though I don’t sit down, I do lean on the table and bury my face in my arms for a moment before resurfacing. “Guys. This is a noble try, very noble indeed, but you are absolutely terrible at pranking.”
My family has always been this way. I keep waiting for them to evolve, to get better at it, but it’s just not their thing. “There’s an art to it, you know? And though I appreciate—”
“It’s not a prank, Carter,” Dad says. “We don’t do pranks. You’re the prank guy. And every year, you think this is us attempting a prank, and every year, we feel horrible that we have to explain it to you all over again.”
“‘Every year’? What does that mean: ‘every year’?”
“It’s been five years, sweetie,” Mom says. A phone rings on the kitchen counter. I’m thinking maybe that’s where I left mine, but Mom grabs it. “Here he is.” She answers the call and stares at the screen. “Hi, Link.”
“Hey,” a man’s voice says. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” Mom says. “I’ll let you talk to him.” She hands me the phone. “It’s . . . Well, you’ll see.”
“Hey, bro,” the man on the screen says, and I sort of want to pass out because he does resemble my little brother. He really does. But, like, a nineteen-year-old man version of him. His huge locks are gone, replaced by a short cut with a few bouncy curls dangling down his forehead. He’s sitting in front of a white wall, a sticker that says Arlo Parks behind him. “Happy birthday.”
I look up at Mom and Dad. “Who is this? Did you hire an actor to play older Lincoln? This is seriously messed up.”
“I know this seems batshit, CT,” the man on-screen says, smoothly incorporating Lincoln’s nickname for me, “and it is batshit, but it’s what we’ve all been dealing with for more than half a decade.”
“What are you talking about? My brother is thirteen. Which is less than sixteen.”
“No, I know,” the Lincoln imposter says. “But you’ve been sixteen for six years. And every time you’re about to turn seventeen, you don’t. You flip back to thinking you’re sixteen, and you lose all the memories and, like, physical changes from the past year. And it just happened again.”
I stare at the screen for a long moment.
Then I start cracking up. “Dude, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And so unnecessarily complicated.” I look to my parents, who are both grimacing like they need to number two. “Mom and Dad, you have to keep a prank simple. Like, you could’ve rearranged the furniture or something, put all the kitchen stuff in the bathroom, so, for example, I’m about to pee, right? But then there’s a microwave on the toilet. And I’m like, Whaaaaaa? And you’re like, Ha ha! And I’m like, Ohhhhh. That would be a good pr—”
“Our wrestling safe word is Cheetos,” fake Lincoln says.
I look back at the screen. “Come again?”
“We once accidentally broke the glass on Mom and Dad’s wedding photo—the one where they’re standing in a random meadow holding umbrellas—and Dad freaked out at us and said we were maniacs. We once wrote a play about being doctors in space doing surgery on an alien, and we performed it for Mom and Dad and Uncle Flip and Uncle Jed. Well, actually, you said you weren’t a writer so I would have to come up with everything myself, but then you kept having all these great ideas.”
My fingers are trembling. That is a lot of really specific information.
“Okay,” I say, working extra hard to form the words. “So . . . clearly my parents prepared you well. But did they tell you what the
name of the alien in the play was?”
“Ah yes!” the guy says, excited. “You asked me this last year, and I couldn’t remember, so I dug up the play from the box in the basement. It’s Flanghorn! The alien is Flanghorn.”
He’s right, dammit. The alien was Flanghorn.
I glance at my parents, and suddenly I see it: They look a little older than they did last night. Mom’s black pixie cut is the same, but she has way more lines on her face. Dad’s hair, on the other hand, has gone almost entirely gray.
Which is when it dawns on me:
This might not be a prank.
He hasn’t texted yet.
This isn’t good.
But there’s still hope. Right?
Maybe his parents took away his phone, thinking he would loop back, but then he didn’t.
So he needs to get his phone back from them and then he’ll text back.
Something like:
Success, Mags! It really worked!
Maybe he won’t text. Maybe he’ll call.
We should have discussed this ahead of time.
But, really, any kind of message coming through this phone will suffice.
Text, call, FaceTime, voice memo.
Even a single GIF, honestly.
Like, a dancing lizard in a party hat under the words I AGED!
My phone lights up.
YES.
It’s Shana. Damn.
Any word?
This isn’t good.
The room spins.
“Whoa!” Dad says, grabbing me under the arms and steering me toward a chair.
“Link,” Mom says, after sliding the phone out of my hands, “we’ll call you back a little later.”
“All right,” Lincoln says. “CT, you can call me whenever to talk! I’m here. You’re going to be okay! Love you!”
“Thanks, sweetie. Love you.” Mom hangs up, and now she and Dad are sitting on either side of me at the table.
Dad puts a hand on mine. “Do you want to say anything? Ask us any questions?”
I shake my head, even though I feel like all the blood flowing through my circulatory system has, in fact, been replaced by questions.
“Here,” Mom says, pulling up something on her phone. “Watch this.”
Before I can protest, she’s holding up the screen, and there I am, talking to the camera, delivering a message to myself.
“Hey there, sexy,” the me on Mom’s phone says, filming himself in my bedroom, wearing the same purple plaid shirt as me. “If you’re watching this, it means you’re back to the beginning of sixteen. Damn. That sucks. And, unfortunately, this is not a prank.
“I know. You’re staring at me saying these words, probably at the kitchen table with Mom and Dad, and thinking, I can’t ever remember filming this! And that’s not because I’m some, like, AI deepfake version of you. It’s because you literally can’t remember. The memories are gone. And you are sixteen again.”
Mom rubs my back.
“Again? you’re thinking. I’ve never been sixteen! Alas, you have. We have. I’m sixteen as I’m filming this! But every time we’re about to turn seventeen, we wake up the next morning a couple inches shorter, several pounds lighter, the growing stubble on our face a little less . . . existent. And, of course, with no memories beyond the last night of being fifteen.”
I feel the seed of a headache blossoming above my right eye.
“So now,” the me on-screen continues, “the billion-dollar question is: WHY? Why is this happening to you? To me? To us?” He throws a hand into the air and shrugs, falling backward onto the bed. “Dude, I wish I knew! We all wish we knew. Because being stuck forever at age sixteen is . . . not ideal! We’ve gone to all kinds of doctors—neurologists, oncologists, blood specialists, aging experts—who’ve tried to figure out what’s happening, how to get us to seventeen. Also healers and psychiatrists. Even a couple rabbis. No one understands it. Though some of them pretend to.
“And we’ve been seeing this therapist guy, Soren, since the second or third loop. He doesn’t know why it’s happening either, but he’s good to talk to. Kind of a dweeb, but a helpful one who occasionally says wise shit. I’m sure there are some other experts we’ve seen that I’m forgetting to mention. I’m the Loop-Four Carter, so some of this happened before my time. And that makes you . . . the Loop-Five Carter.”
“Loop Six, actually,” Dad says. “You didn’t want to make a new video this time around. You were hoping it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“So, yeah,” Loop-Four Carter says, sitting back up in bed. “I know it’s gonna take a lot longer than the length of this video for you to process all this. But, if you take away nothing else from what I’m saying, at least know this: It’s real. Not a prank. I repeat: NOT. A. PRANK. The sooner you accept that, the better this year is going to be. Oh, also in the Good News Department: You already have your driver’s license! You’ve had it for five years, so it’s not even a junior license anymore. It’s the real thing. Drive at all hours. With as many people as you want in the car.”
“Well, within reason,” Mom interjects.
“And you don’t need to waste time taking a stupid driver’s test on your birthday! Cheers to that !” Loop-Four Me takes a long exhale, taps his fingers over his mouth. “And that’s basically the deal. This won’t be as bad as it feels right now. It really won’t. I’d tell you to reach out whenever you need me, but I’m you! So unfortunately that’s not possible. You should lean on Lincoln, though. And Mom and Dad, obviously. We’re gonna figure this out. We’re gonna get to seventeen. And till then: Just know you’re the same cool-as-hell Carter you’ve always been. We got this, baby!” On-screen Carter gives a peace sign. “That’s kind of a stupid way to end this video. Ah, whatever.”
The image of me on-screen freezes, a smirk on my face.
I’m numb.
And the headache has spiderwebbed out to the side of my skull.
“You okay, hon?” Mom asks, rubbing my back again. “We know it’s a lot.”
“Yeah, what’re you thinking about all this, Carter?” Dad asks.
I’m thinking I’ve been hit by a metaphysical Mack Truck.
“I don’t know what to think,” I say.
Dad puts his hand on mine. “Well, like you said in the video, we’re here for you.”
“Always,” Mom says, giving me a hug. Dad joins in too.
I awkwardly pat their arms.
’t have to do this all over again next year.”
“Pete,” Mom says.
“What?” he says. “We are.”
“I know, of course we are, but we should also be prepared to just . . .”
“To just what?”
“To accept!” They’re still hugging me as they have this argument.
“Sure, we can accept the situation,” Dad says, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep . . .”
“Keep what?”
Dad has noticed the horrified look on my face.
“Let’s . . . talk about this later. Sorry, Carter.” He pats my shoulder and looks away.
“Yeah, sorry, sweets,” Mom agrees, giving me one last squeeze before releasing the hug. “It’s easy for us to . . . get caught up in our frustration. That this happened to you. But like you said in the video, this always feels the worst on the first day. It will get better.”
“It does feel really bad right now,” I say.
“That’s normal,” Dad says. “I mean. In its abnormal way.”
I peer around at the kitchen, trying to spot differences from yesterday as if it’s a puzzle in a kids’ magazine.
“So what happens now?” I finally ask.
“That’s up to you,” Mom says. “You can stay home and adjust to this situation—Dad and I both took off work to be here with you—or . . . you can go to school.”
“Can we go to the movies? What’s even playing? Do movie theaters still exist?”
Mom and Dad look at each other. “We could go to the movies, in theory,” Mom says, looking back to me. “They still exist. But maybe, for today, let’s keep the options to either home or school.”
I feel an overwhelming urge to move around, so I stand up and start pacing the kitchen.
“What grade am I even in?” I open the fridge. Mostly the same old stuff. There’s a brand of oat milk I don’t recognize.
“Well,” Dad says, “up till yesterday, you were a junior. But you’ll be moved back to sophomore year. That’s how we started doing it in Loop Two. Just easier that way.”
“Since you won’t remember anything you learned as a junior,” Mom adds.
“I see.” I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and toss it into the air. I mean to catch it, but I miss—Mom gasps—and it hits the tiles with a thud.
“It’s fine,” Dad says, not so convincingly. “It’ll still be good.”
I pick it up and take a bite, accidentally getting some of the mushy bruised part. I pretend it’s not gross. “So if this has been going on for six years, I’ve been going to Ridgedale High School for, like, a long time.”
Mom and Dad nod sheepishly.
“That’s kind of embarrassing.”
“It’s really not,” Mom says, a little too emphatically. “Everyone knows about your condition. They’re all very understanding.”
I put my face into my hand and press on my closed eyeballs. “This is a nightmare. This is a terrible nightmare. I need to wake up. I need to wake up.”
“We know, Carter,” Mom says. “We—”
“Where’s my phone?” My eyes are open again. “It wasn’t in my room.”
“Yeah, we have it for you.” Mom gestures to Dad.
“Oh, right,” he says. He goes into his office and comes out with a large black rectangle. “It’s here.”
“That’s not my phone.”
“Well, it’s not the one you remember, no,” Dad says carefully, as if he’s ready for me to explode. “Phones are bigger now. Bigger screen, you’ll like it.”
“I don’t care about a bigger screen, I want my phone. With all my photos and texts and everything on it.”
“We don’t have that phone anymore,” Mom says. “It broke.”
“It broke? What happened? Did it fall in the toilet or something?”
“It just broke, Cart,” Dad says. “It was old.”
“Okay, fine, fine, so what’s on this new one?”
“Nothing,” Dad says.
“Nothing?”
Mom and Dad exchange another look. “It’s not really a choice,” Dad says. “Your therapist, Soren, says it’s too distressing and disorienting for you to see memories that you never experienced.”
“It’s worked out well this way so far,” Mom says.
“Fine!” I snatch the phone from Dad’s hand. “I’ll take this stupid oversized garbage phone.”
“The camera is pretty amazing,” Dad says.
“Oh, very cool,” I say, the flood of internally building sarcasm bursting whatever dam there was. “I guess today is actually pretty great after all. What with this camera and everything. Can’t wait to snap some pics!”
Dad just calmly nods, as if he’s expecting this. “Do you want some chocolate chip pancakes?”
“What?” I ask.
“For breakfast. A birthday treat. I already started putting together the batter.”
“You did? Not Mom?”
“Your father has, uh, learned to cook in the past few years. And bake. He’s actually quite good at it.”
Dad gives a little grin, clearly so proud, and it’s endearing, but I also want to smack it right off his face. Then a third feeling arrives and replaces the first two: ...
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